


being your darling

by goldentulips



Series: an earlier grave is an optional way [2]
Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: (in a sex fantasy), Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Come Eating, Double Penetration, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Masturbation, Nightmares, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, Porn With Plot, Post-Outlast: Whistleblower, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rimming, eddie has intrusive and suicidal thoughts frequently, lots of unnecessary sex, waylon is hyper sexual or sex repulsed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:42:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23235652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldentulips/pseuds/goldentulips
Summary: There is no escape. Mount Massive and the Engine doesn't just disappear because they've run away. Distance doesn't do anything. Eddie's thoughts are quieter, but they still linger. Things from his past that he has fought to forget creep up, things he doesn't want Waylon to know threaten to be told and destroy Waylon's fragile sense of self now. He's barely holding on, barely getting enough sleep at night. The only thing he has is Eddie, but his dreams won't let him forget the version of Eddie that threatened to destroy him before.
Relationships: Eddie Gluskin/Waylon Park
Series: an earlier grave is an optional way [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1670479
Comments: 22
Kudos: 209





	1. Chapter 1

_— He imagines what he would look like without one of his fingers. The ring finger on his right hand, specifically. What would Eddie do if it was missing? How easy would it be to chop it off? He imagines not it wouldn’t be too difficult. Take the knife, press it down, let it sever away. He’d bleed, but he could stop it. And it wouldn’t change anything. Not really. There’s no harm in it, right? If he were to just cut it off, to just be missing a finger. He could make up an accident if anyone asked, but he doesn’t think anyone would. Polite people don’t pose those kinds of questions. But it probably shouldn’t be his right hand. He’s not left-handed. It would be too much work to push the knife through. It’d be so much easier to cut away the finger on his left hand, and it would be even less of a deal. It’s not his dominant hand. He’d be fine. He’d be—_

“Eddie?”

He sets the knife down, turning to face him in the doorway, “Yes?”

“What are you doing?”

“Putting dishes away.”

“That all?”

Eddie nods, turning back, sliding the knife in the chopping block, returning to gather the utensils in the strainer. The bustle of the kitchen has quieted since the restaurant has closed. Everyone is at the bar, if anyone’s here at all. The hotel isn’t very large. Something small but substantial for the city. The owners bought the restaurant next door and tore down the wall, connecting the two buildings to form a little place for their guests to eat.

The two of them came to the city five months ago. They stayed in that motel just long enough to scrounge up jobs that were willing to pay under the table, get them enough money for a bus ticket to who knows where, along with a substantial portion of cash to rent a place to stay. They settled on a city just big enough that they could be lost in the bustle, but small enough that they weren’t oppressed by the people.

Neither of them really like people.

“Are you going to be done soon?” Waylon asks.

“Yes.”

“Can I help you?”

“Don’t want to wait on me?” he asks, looking up to meet his gaze.

“No. I don’t.”

He steps forward, taking the towel from where it rests on the counter, running it over the porcelain surface of the dishes, drying away the last drops of the last few dishes from the last few customers, finally getting ready to be set back in their homes with all the others. Eddie watches Waylon’s hands, slow with his movements to separate forks and spoons from the other. The two of them haven’t kissed since they left the motel. They haven’t had sex. They’ve barely touched. But they don’t go anywhere without each other.

They both got jobs at this place so they could come and go with each other. Eddie thinks they’re magnetized together. He thinks Waylon would be happy if he could be free of Eddie. He could be. If one of them ran, while the other wasn’t looking, nothing would stop them. But Eddie can’t go. He can’t say goodbye to Waylon. He thinks it must be that way for him, too. They’ve bonded through a horrible thing. The only thing that’ll separate them now is death.

And Eddie’s terrified that if he’s without Waylon for too long, he won’t be able to fight the voices in his head. The ones telling him to chop off his finger, to steal a wallet, to step out in front of a bus coming down the street. He doesn’t know what it is. He doesn’t know who he is. But he knows what happened inside of Mount Massive. There is a part of him that feels carved out and empty, and it only seems to feel a little less vacant when Waylon lays beside him at night, unable to leave for his own bed. One of these days, they’re going to run out of the excuse of not enough money for a second mattress in the apartment and they’re going to have to confront that they want to be beside each other.

“You’re quieter than usual,” Waylon says.

“So are you.”

“I’m tired.”

“So am I.”

“Hm,” Waylon says quietly, like that ends that. He hands Eddie the stack of plates to set with the others. “That everything?”

“I need to grab my things before I go.”

Waylon nods, resting against the counter, waiting for him like he always does. Here or in the hallway. Occasionally, Eddie is the one waiting on him, watching him fold the last of the towels from the wash the way he was taught, filling maid carts with cleaning supplies or putting in the last load of sheets before he gets ready to leave.

But it always ends the same. They always look at each other like they expect the other to reach out their hand, and maybe if they did, they would take it. But they don’t. There is too much risk that they wouldn’t. Especially to Eddie.

The last time they held hands was on the bus, when they first got on. Waylon took Eddie’s and rested his head against his shoulder, closing his eyes and falling fast asleep. But when the bus stopped, when they got off, their hands tore apart and they never came back. There was nothing really that stopped them. It seemed to be a mutual agreement that happened at the same time. They aren’t who they were for the last few months or for the weeks they were at the asylum. But stepping off that bus, they could go back to being who they were before either of them went there.

Eddie would like that. To undo the damage he caused. But then he wouldn’t have met Waylon. And a tiny voice inside of him tells him to be grateful for the blood on his hands, because Waylon might’ve died if Eddie’s place had been taken by someone else. But he shuts that voice away fast, chastising himself for ever believing that Waylon should be thankful he held him captive and hurt him.

_It’s fine,_ he tells himself as they leave. _It’s fine._

But when he sees the cars go by as they walk down the street, he thinks about how easy it would be to push that woman on her phone into the road. He thinks about the car that’s sat abandoned by their apartment and whether or not the force of his fist could make the glass shatter. He thinks about it like how he thinks about sneaking into the pool at night and letting the oxygen leave his body as he floats along the floor of it until there is more water inside of his lungs than air.

It’s not the same as it was when they were in the asylum.

He doesn’t have the excuse of the Engine for his thoughts anymore. It was nice, for a little while, to pretend it wasn’t him. But it is. It always has been. The Engine just amplified them, turned them into their own living thing that controlled him. And it lingers. It’ll always linger.

  
  


— _It’s not him. It’s not Eddie. It’s not him. It can’t be. But he’s been violated and destroyed by someone he trusted before. Hasn’t he? Arm over his throat, spitting words at him,_ **_don’t be a little bitch, Waylon._ ** _His name like a song, a mockery, teeth closing over his skin like he’s trying to tear him apart but Waylon is too broken, too scared, too humiliated to fight, to do anything but cry and let his cry come out like a broken screaming sob._

  
  


Waylon wakes with something choking him. He can’t breathe. He can feel tears in his eyes, he can feel pain pressing down on his ribs, and his legs thrash, kicking as a scream comes out his mouth half-broken. Someone is touching him. He needs people to stop touching him. He needs to be left the fuck alone, so he squeezes his eyes to shut away the tears and he punches wildly, kicking, screaming until he knows he makes contact with whoever it is.

“Waylon, stop!”

He stumbles, falling, escaping from the bed but crumpling to the floor in the corner. He tries to make himself breathe and it comes out in ragged breaths as he forces himself to look back to the bed. 

“Waylon…” he says quietly, a hand reaching out to him.

He’s bleeding. There’s blood smeared across his face. The room is dark, but he catches that detail. Waylon knows what blood looks like. The undeniability of it shimmer in the soft light.

He makes a move toward him, and Waylon shrinks away, hiding his face against the wall. He doesn’t want to see it when someone kills him. He doesn’t want that to be the last thing he sees. If he keeps his eyes closed, he can imagine something else. He won’t be able to imagine away the pain but at least he won’t see his body ripped to shreds.

“I’ll go,” he whispers. “I’ll go to the living room. Okay? Waylon?”

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t say anything. He waits until he hears the door open and close before he opens his eyes.

_Waylon._

Not darling, not little pig, not someone ranting and raving about the scent of his skin and his blood. Just Waylon.

  
  


He creeps out of the room twenty-three minutes later, peering around the corner of the darkened hallway to the dimly lit living room. It’s so tiny it can barely be called such. There’s a couch, jammed in the corner, a small television that neither of them use but felt like they needed it to complete the way the living room looks. It sits on a cheap TV stand with scratches on the surface neither of them admit to causing. Maybe neither of them did. Maybe they are just physical manifestations of their insides, tearing away at the furniture.

“Eddie?”

“Yes, Waylon?”

He smiles softly, his hand pressed against his stomach, shoving that need for him to call his name down further and further. He’s been good at that. Pushing his feelings down. Eddie has never questioned what happened that night they got off the bus together, and Waylon hasn’t volunteered the information. It’s too difficult to voice. But at night, when Eddie falls asleep first, which is always a fifty-fifty chance, Waylon watches him sleep trying to reconcile this man with the one that held him captive. They are so entirely different. So completely opposite. _Quiet. Soft._ Yes.

“Are you okay?” Waylon asks.

“I should be asking _you_ that.”

“I hit you,” Waylon whispers, staying hidden in the shadows, not letting Eddie see him. He’s illuminated only by the soft glow of the tv screen, left on like a night light, tuned into a rerun of a sitcom that aired twenty years ago. “You were bleeding.”

“Yes. You kicked me. In the face.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Waylon. You didn’t break anything.”

“You sure?”

“Waylon,” Eddie says, a hand reaching out across the back of the couch. For a moment, Waylon thinks he’s beckoning him over, before his hand rests against the fabric. “I’m sure. Are you?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you going to tell me what happened?”

_I am too sad to tell you._

“Bad dream.”

“Any specifics?”

“No,” he says, biting his tongue. “No. None.”

Eddie is quiet, for a long moment. Waylon tunes into the sounds around them. The soft sound of air coming through vents, warm against his skin when it reaches his body. The sound of cars on the street outside, rare and far between, but still there. If he listens closer, he can hear the wind whistling as it picks up. A siren a few streets away. A train close by, but muffled by the distance. A man contemplating what to say next.

“Was I in it?”

“It’s late, Eddie. We should get back to sleep.”

An answer when he tried to give none.

Neither of them move. Waylon wants to hold out his hand, tell Eddie to come with him, wants to ask him to hold onto him and keep him safe, but he can’t. He can’t. 

He turns and leaves finally, the quiet more than he can bear. The door to the bedroom closes behind him, but he doesn’t lay on the bed. He takes the blanket, wrapping it around himself as he crawls into the closet, curling up as tight as he can manage, needing the comfort of a small space to close in around him. What good has that ever done him, though? Eddie found him in the locker once. He dragged him away.

And now he’s—

He’s here. In the other room.

Different.

_Soft. Quiet._

Not the same person he was inside those walls. And neither is Waylon.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? They aren’t the same people anymore.

  
  


— _When he was a child, Eddie used to play with fire. It was the danger of it. The excitement that it could destroy anything it touched. He used to sit out behind his house, looking at those trees clustered so close to the edge of their yard, listening to the arguments behind him, turning a lighter over in his hand. He wanted to burn something down. The house, mainly, but the trees, sometimes, too. They represented the long lost future/freedom/hope that he could no longer have. To be wild and happy. To live in a treehouse in the woods, to never go to school, to never have to deal with the kids that looked at him strangely or the teachers that saw bruises on his arms and said nothing._

_He wanted to burn something down to the ground._

_So he did._

_One by one the pages of his yearbooks, old schoolwork, photos from the albums when he was a baby, disappeared. Day by day his little stack of memories fell away until it was just him and he could effectively wipe away the false happiness and the very real trauma and replace it with his own fictional stories. One where he didn’t have the parents that birthed him._

_Little boy Eddie, sad and alone._

_Except when he wanted to be._

  
  


“Good morning,” Eddie says, holding out the cup of coffee toward Waylon. He takes it, eyes tired, holding it close to him. He doesn’t say anything when he sips at it slowly. Always waiting to get to the perfect temperature, it seems.

“No ‘darling’?” Waylon asks.

“What?”

“You used to always say _good morning, darling,_ not just _good morning.”_

“Oh. I didn’t… know.”

“That you said darling? You said it all the time,” Waylon replies. “You haven’t in a while, but—”

“I meant that you wanted me to.”

Waylon looks up to him, tired eyes, “It’s…”

“Waylon? Do you want me to call you ‘darling’?”

He thinks about the lack of _them_ in the last few weeks. The separation between them. The absolute void. The bruise on Eddie’s face. The blood.

“No.”

  
  


— _He patches a hole in one of his shirts. Something that ripped because the size was too small. Just barely. It wasn’t a noticeable thing until Eddie was reaching on the top cabinet, bending in a way that made the polyester fabric unable to stretch, the seam on the shoulder and the sleeve coming undone. Not a lot. But enough. It’s poor craftsmanship. Made in another country for cheap labor, shipped over to sell in the stores. CEOs putting extra money in their pocket they don’t need so they can exploit people who don’t have a choice. He didn’t have a choice._

_If Eddie had had a choice, he wouldn’t have gotten it. He was used to these kinds of things happening when he was young, but there was a time he had money, when he saved up every penny he could to buy the clothes he wanted. A limited variety, but top of the line fabric. Perfectly fitted. No problems like these._

_Though, maybe, he is fooling himself thinking a shirt costing five times as much equated to a company caring about people instead of profit._

_Eddie’s hand pauses as the needle pulls the thread taut, his hand poised in the air, a sudden thought in his head. He tries to shake it free, but it mutates. Mutates from the feeling of a needle pressing into his fingertip, from the thought of sewing clothes to his skin to pressing the needle into his eye. Sharp pointed tip lined with his pupil. Stabbing himself, sewing the wound closed again. Turning himself blind. He closes his eyes, dropping his project, willing it to go away._

STOP. STOP. STOP.

_Please, stop._

Eddie opens his eyes when he feels a pain jolt through him, the needle pressed into his thumb, blood spilling across the light blue thread.

He whispers a curse, pulling it from his hand slowly, wincing.

_He doesn’t know how to stop this from happening._

  
  


Waylon sits out on the fire escape, the window propped open behind him. It’s too cold for this, but he needs to be somewhere else, and he doesn’t quite want to escape the apartment entirely. The building they live in reminds him of a motel sometimes, with their doors open to the outside, a little walkway that peers over a crowded pool. The buildings form a U shape around it, the last bit left open to a thick expanse of trees. Trees that remind him of the asylum. Trees that feel like they harbor the variants of Mount Massive, ready to break through the wrought iron fence and tear him apart.

Two weeks ago he was sitting outside in front of the door, drinking his coffee and stealing fresh air when he saw the branches rustle. Hands grabbing at the fence, screaming and hissing loudly at the kids crowded at the end of the pool. They screamed, then laughed, yelling back at the older kids and their Halloween masks. But to Waylon it felt like they were all one step away from being eaten alive.

He hasn’t gone to sit out front since. He instead comes to the back window, risking the old fire escape collapsing underneath him instead. He’d rather fall to his death than be reminded of Jeremy/Frank/Chris/etc, etc, etc. There are too many people that hurt him in this world.

He shudders, from the cold or from the terror, he’s not sure, but he turns around, ducking back inside, closing the window as his hands start to shake.

It’s hard to be alone. It’s hard to be alone outside. He can last thirty minutes on the fire escape. A solid twenty-nine more than by the front door, when they leave for work and Waylon has to resist the urge to drag Eddie so they can get to the safety of the street and the cars.

He drops the blinds, closing the curtains tight. They spent their first paycheck getting heavy duty blinds. Thick wooden slats that shut out as much light as possible. Keeps people from looking in. Black out curtains, double layered. Eddie stitched them together to help ease Waylon’s panic of anyone seeing them. They’re on every window. He’d board them shut, if he could.

“Waylon?” — he jumps at the sound of Eddie’s voice. He’s so quiet, sneaking up on him all the time, — “You’re shaking.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

Waylon turns around to face him, a small anger building up inside of him. He wants to scream. He wants to yell at him. He wants Eddie to see that the only thing getting him through this is the thought that it’s over. But it’s not over. And Eddie doesn’t get his panic because he was never a fucking victim. He wasn’t the prey running for his life hiding in lockers and under beds. He was the hunter. He was the one tearing people apart. He was the one hanging dozens of dead bodies from a rooftop.

And yet, for that exact reason, he feels safer when he’s around him. It means Eddie is capable of murder. It means Eddie wouldn’t hesitate to slaughter someone for coming near Waylon.

He hates himself for it.

“I used to smoke,” he says instead, grasping at whatever he could. “I had an apartment in the city. I used to sit on the fire escape and watch the people walking down the streets. I would go through half a pack before I’d go back inside. Barely touching them. Just letting them burn away. It’s the only time I did it. Once a week, just to see the people.”

“You don’t seem like a smoker.”

“I gave it up when I couldn’t afford it anymore. And I…” he trails off.

_I met Lisa._

And Lisa had a zero tolerance on smoking. She barely let him drink. She wasn’t pure, she wasn’t a prude, she was just overly cautious and worried. Her mother died from lung cancer. Her dad in a drunk driving accident. She didn’t even take meds for headaches or migraines, which she suffered from frequently. She didn’t want to risk anything. If it was optional, she didn’t touch it. She just suffered quietly, pretending she was okay. She once told him that was just what it was like to be a woman/daughter/wife/mother.

“And what?”

“Nothing,” he says quietly. “What happened to your hand?”

Eddie holds up his bandaged thumb, “Just a sewing accident. Nothing to worry about.”

“Oh. Okay.”

They stand in silence for a long time. Eddie watching Waylon watching him. His eyes keep shifting to Eddie’s thumb, bandaged so heavily, before Eddie hides his hands behind his back. He still dresses the same way he had in the asylum. Vests and dress shirts, ironing his pants in the morning and shining black loafers in the evening before bed. He sheds as little of it as he has to when they go to work, but on their days off, in the mornings before they have to leave, he dresses this way. Like he has something to prove.

Eddie turns to leave, and Waylon takes a step forward, his brain searching through whatever he can that he could possibly say to keep him here, “Did you? Smoke?”

“What?” he asks, turning back to him. It takes him a minute to register Waylon’s question before he shakes his head. “No. My father was very into cigars though. He had these special antique boxes. My mom sold them after he died. She got more than she thought, but it was never enough.”

He says it so casually, as if the _never enough_ didn’t lead to him being held down and assaulted by his aunt and uncle.

“I thought your father wasn’t in your life,” Waylon says quietly. “I thought…”

“What?”

“I… you said you didn’t know your father.”

“Did I?”

Waylon nods. He remembers it. But he can’t. It’s so distant—something he said while Waylon was running from him in the asylum. One of those things that came out of his mouth that had barely registered. But it had. Eddie had said he didn’t know his father. Didn’t he?

“He left when I was young. Doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t open the window, though. Not in October. It’ll make the apartment cold. We can’t waste heat.”

“Right.”

Of course not.

But Eddie’s words ring in his head.

One moment his dad was dead, the next he had left? He’s lying to him. Eddie is lying to him and he isn’t even doing a good job at it.

  
  


— _He broke a plate at work today. He didn’t mean to. Or he did. He_ **_did_ ** _mean to._

_Eddie was scrubbing them clean, setting them aside in their neat little rows before he had an image of smashing them into pieces. He was thinking of Waylon the night before, of his father. Eddie’s hands scrubbed those plates clean like he wishes he could scrub himself clean. But he can’t. He’s always dirty. He’s always going to be wrong and broken. He is always going to have these thoughts in his head._

_Break the plate, they whisper, break the plate, use the shards to cut yourself open. Slice your wrists just so and you’ll bleed out before anyone even notices. You’ll be dead before any help can even arrive._

_And then the plate was broken, falling into a dozen shards across the kitchen floor._

“Jesus fuck,” one of the cooks says. “Everything okay?”

“Yes—Sorry,” he says, setting his gloves aside. “It slipped. I’ll get it, don’t worry.”

  
  


They always sleep as soon as they get back from work, or at least pretend to. It’s not quite so simple, even if they always wake up early, just after the sun rises, stealing as much of the daylight for something other than work that they can. Eddie sews clothes. Using a portion of his paycheck for fabrics and thread. Waylon cooks. He likes to cook. He always has. Lisa was better at it, but he found solace in dicing things up evenly. He doesn’t mind hours of prepwork. And now it’s even better suited for him.

Because Waylon doesn’t like seeing Eddie with a knife, even if he trusts him.

Waylon makes big breakfasts, spends hours on lunches and dinners. He tries to bake, but he fails every time, though he fails a little less at every attempt. Eddie makes a dress that looks like something from the vintage shop down the street. Adding more and more details until it’s too full of embroidered butterflies and flowers to be anything else.

But at night, they are quiet, they’re exhausted, they lay on the bed facing opposite directions until they fall asleep.

Tonight, Waylon turns to face Eddie. He reaches a hand out, gently, touching his side lightly. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He just needs to touch him. He’s—

Lonely. He hasn’t felt this lonely in a long time.

Eddie turns back, looking over at him. “You okay?”

“Fine,” he whispers. “Curious.”

“Curious? About what?”

Why Eddie doesn’t call him darling anymore. Why Waylon wants him to. If he can curl up in that space against his chest and feel tiny and fragile and protected there. What happened with Eddie’s dad. What led him to the asylum in the first place. Waylon never pried into his file. That wasn’t why he was there.

But he can only decide on one of these tonight.

“Can I come closer?”

Eddie nods, letting Waylon move closer. They wrap around each other like there’s nothing else they could do. An easy tangle of limbs that they’re familiar with. Eddie’s arms around him are strong, secure. Safe.

Eddie is _safe._

  
  


_— But he still dreams, doesn’t he?_

_Running through the halls of Mount Massive. Running from a man that wants him dead._

_And he sees him. Eddie, in the distance, at the end of a hallway._

_Two parts of himself tearing in half._

_One, terrified that he’s been caught between two monsters._

_The other thankful he has finally found his savior._

  
  


He wonders when the dream will stop.

When it’ll stop playing on repeat in his head. When he will connect the Eddie living with him with the Eddie from before. When his brain will stop tormenting him with things from his past, so intricately woven with his new future.

He doesn't really know what he's doing. Trying, he supposes. Trying to be with him. Trying to mimic the same softness that Eddie extends to him. He doesn't know how. He was good at before, even better when the tender nature of his actions were so heavily contrasted against Eddie's violence. But he doesn't know what he's doing.

Waylon steps into the bathroom quietly, then thinking twice and retreating back, only to push the door to make sure it squeaks, to drop the towel on the pile of clothes Eddie's brought with a heavy thump. He undressed, not really sure how to make soft cotton pjs announce his presence, but when he reaches for the shower door, Eddie is already looking at him before turning away, angling his head up to the water.

"Did you want something?"

"Yes," he says. "I need to shower."

“And you want to join me?”

“Yes.”

"Come in, then."

He breathes out a sigh of relief, thankful he wasn't turned away. He doesn't know what he would do with that embarrassment. He steps into the shower, arms circling around Eddie's waist in an instant, resting his cheek against his back.

"That going to get you clean?" Eddie asks.

"No."

"Of course not," he says. "How long do you plan on staying like that?"

Forever, maybe.

He brushes his thumb across Eddie's abdomen, presses a kiss against his skin, "Are you going to turn me away?"

"Waylon…" he says, a warning in his voice. For what? "Do you think this is a good idea?"

"I wanted to hold you. I didn't mean to intrude."

“I thought you wanted a shower?” Eddie asks. “You shouldn’t waste water.”

He needed skin to skin contact. He misses the nights when they had it before. After sex or no sex at all, just shedding their clothes or retreating after their baths to curl up against each other. When Waylon would listen to his heartbeat and know his own was going in rhythm with it, just like his breathing.

"Okay," Waylon replies, but he doesn't move.

Eddie does. He turns, pulling Waylon's arms away, pressing him back against the wall. Cold tile against his skin, offset by the hot water that spills from Eddie to him. The steam is making him light headed. That, or the way Eddie keeps looking at him.

He's hardly paying attention, but he feels Eddie pull his leg up, hand holding onto his thigh, pulling him close.

"How's your leg?" Eddie asks. "It's been a while. Does it feel better?"

"Haven’t had a bad day in months."

Eddie nods, his hand runs along Waylon's thigh, pausing at the knee. "Do you want me to bathe you, Waylon?"

"W-Why?"

"You're dirty."

For a moment, he lets himself picture those scars on Eddie's face fresh and bloody, the grip on him tighter, rougher.

_You're dirty._

_Yes,_ he thinks. Scrape him clean. Turn him inside out. Break him apart and put him together properly this time.

"Waylon?"

"Be gentle," Waylon whispers. "Please."

"Of course. I told you I wouldn’t hurt you."

The sponge isn't like the one he used before. It's softer, smells of a fragrance that Waylon picked purposefully because it didn't remind him of his life before, but now reminds him of Eddie, because they both use it, and it sticks to his skin the same way blood and sweat did before.

Eddie slides the sponge over Waylon's skin, pulling him away from the wall to trail suds across his back, over his chest. When his hand brushes against the inside of his thighs, Waylon can feel himself twitch, and he knows Eddie knows, because he's clean there, but Eddie keeps running the sponge over his skin again and again. Gentle motions that finally make Waylon's hips move forward, wanting more.

"Eddie—"

"Don't move."

He nods, cutting himself off. He was going to tell him that he didn't come here for sex. He really did just want to be with him. To have that same vulnerability that he had before.

Eddie is on his knees, running the sponge against his legs, moving it up just far enough for Waylon to let out a tiny noise.

"We can't in here," Eddie says, turning Waylon around, the sponge moving over his cheeks, but it disappears fast, replaced with Eddie's hands, spreading his legs apart. "You could fall. Get hurt."

"Then we won't."

"But you're still dirty," he says, pausing, mouth pressed against his buttocks. A kiss placed where a bruise was once. Eddie's mouth presses against him, little foreplay left before his tongue is circling him. He has a way of doing it light, barely touching him, making Waylon arch back against him, which does little to help. 

Eddie hasn't touched Waylon like that, with his mouth, since their first night, and even then, he hardly put this much care into it. In the weeks following their escape, sex was often but it was rushed. Eddie didn't do much other than press himself inside of Waylon and fuck him. Even then, he never went all the way. He refused. He kept telling Waylon he didn't want to hurt him. Not that it matters. Waylon tried. He was never prepared enough to take more than half, and that felt like pushing it, but he was also never patient enough to let Eddie stretch him open.

But now Eddie gives him his full attention. Tongue pressing inside of him, lapping at his hole, pushing deeper before retreating and repeating. There's little doubt that Waylon can ignore his erection now, it's pressed against the cold tile, leaking precum, aching with the need to be touched.

"Eddie, please…"

"You think you're clean?"

Waylon barely manages a nod.

"Let me check for you."

It takes a second. Waylon glances behind him, watches Eddie suck in his fingers for a moment before one finger glides over his entrance, teasing him with a slow circle before pushing in. It curls as it pushes further, ghosting against his prostate, knuckles pressed against his skin as Eddie's finger retreats, pushing back in again slowly.

He wants to tell him to hurry. He wants to keep this feeling.

Eddie adds another finger, repeating his actions again. Stretching him open, making him moan. He's going to cum if he keeps this up.

"I like you like this," Eddie whispers. "Maybe I should play with you more often."

Waylon pictures himself laying on the couch, Eddie's fingers inside of him, fingering him during commercial breaks on TV shows, or kneeled down behind him while he's doing dishes, Eddie's tongue making his body shudder. And he wants it. He wants to be this little doll that means nothing, that Eddie plays with when he’s bored. He wants to stop being a person for the rest of his life.

"I'm—I'm going to-to cum if you don't stop."

"Maybe you should."

"But I'd be dirty again."

"And I could clean you. Again."

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

"No," Waylon whispers. "No, I need—I need you."

The fingers leave him with little comment, Eddie standing up, turning him around and pressing a rough kiss against Waylon's lips. He's lifted up, arms holding him against the wall. It's strange to be so weightless, to count so heavily on Eddie's strength.

"What about the water?" Waylon asks.

"Fuck the water."

Eddie's hand is on him—on them—stroking them together. Just like before. Just like before, Waylon can hear a whine in his voice pulling forth words that spill across him before he can stop it.

"I need you inside of me, Eddie."

"I know."

"You prepped me so well," Waylon whispers. "I'm so ready for you, you can't—"

"Shh," he says, catching Waylon's lips. He silences him with a kiss, his hand working faster. Waylon is gasping, moaning against Eddie's mouth, barely returning the kiss. His body is so hot he's going to melt he's going to—

_Fuck. No no no—_

He hears himself say Eddie's name on repeat, cumming violently, his entire body trembling and shaking, limbs giving out, caught only by Eddie's arm and the wall behind him.

Eddie's hand leaves him, fingers pressed against his skin. He knows what Eddie is doing even before the cum is pressed into his mouth. So much of it on his tongue before Eddie kisses him. Messy and rough. He can feel the semen dribbling down his chin, smeared against Eddie's lips, remnants washed away by water.

"Why did you do that?" Waylon whispers, panting, body weak and sagged against Eddie's. 

"I like the way your cum looks in your mouth."

"I meant jerking me off. I wanted—"

"I know. I'm not done."

The water shuts off. The room goes quiet as Eddie carries Waylon out of the bathroom. He feels the soft blankets of the bed on his back. Watches Waylon retrieve the bottle of lube kept in the nightstand. They've never used it. They bought it a few nights before they left the motel, when they had gone through so much of it. He watches Eddie fumble with protective seals while the feeling in his legs return.

But he's still barely recovering when Eddie is back, leaving a trail of kisses down his neck and chest, pausing only to tease his nipples for a moment before continuing on. 

He's not—

Used to Eddie.

All of the sex dreams he's had in the last few weeks have been borderline violent beyond what's acceptable for a fantasy. He had images of this in his head of Eddie using him. He would jerk off in the bathroom in the middle of the night, wishing that he was at least worth that much to Eddie still. Waylon isn’t expecting Eddie to take him in his mouth, to press his lips and his tongue over the head of his cock and make him squirm like he can’t stop himself.

When they first escaped, Eddie and him had sex in the car when they ran out of gas. Eddie had cum within three minutes of being inside of Waylon. It was embarrassing and shameful for Eddie.

For Waylon, though, it made him feel sexy, good. A sort of praising without the words. That's how good Waylon was to him. Good enough to make Eddie cum when he was just trying to get used to a cock inside of him.

And after?

Eddie had given him a blowjob Tongue trailing up and down, lips pressed against the head of his cock while his tongue teases his hole, swiping away precum. That was when he started to praise Waylon with his words. _You taste so good, darling, your cock is so perfect, darling. I was such a fool, thinking I could live without this, darling._

It was the opposite of Waylon's need to hear his name when they had sex the second time. He needed Eddie to know it was him, that he was a guy, that Eddie was Eddie and not the Groom that was going to turn him over and fuck him without lube. When Eddie's mouth was on him, he needed to hear the word _darling_ to reiterate that he wanted it. That the word so often used in placement of a name could be said around a cock in his mouth and he wanted Waylon all the same.

Eddie is quiet now, his work on Waylon is slow and suffocating. Hollowed cheeks as he takes all of Waylon. He was still mostly soft when Eddie started this, but he's hard now, wanting to fuck Eddie's mouth until he's the same mess Waylon was the fourth night at the motel when he laid on his back and let Eddie push so far into him that it felt like his length was pushing the oxygen out of his lungs. When he took all of what he could of Eddie in his mouth and he would still buck his hips forward, pressing further into Waylon’s throat. Eddie won’t ever be the way Waylon was then—with drool down his chin and ragged breaths trying to catch up, his face red and his lungs burning. He wishes he could make Eddie like that. See him on his knees, weak and unable to keep up for once.

Not this time, though.

“Eddie _please.”_

Eddie leans back, taking the lube and coating himself with it generously. Waylon watches him stroke himself and he opens his legs wider. _Come on, come on._

Eddie presses two fingers inside of Waylon, coating his insides with lube, adding more and more every time Waylon thinks he's finally done.

And when Eddie lines himself up, Waylon has to brace himself for it. All that preparing and it feels like it meant nothing. Eddie grunts when he pushes inside of him, and Waylon feels his body fill. He’s too big. It isn’t painful like their first time, and Waylon tricks himself for a second thinking he might be able to take all of him.

"You're so fucking tight, Waylon," he whispers. "Fuck."

"How far—"

"Half. Less than."

_Fuck._

He can never take him. He wants Eddie to just shove himself all the way in. He didn't realize how much he wanted the feeling of it. It feels dirty and stupid and wrong, but the thought of Eddie's balls slapping against his skin makes him shudder.Waylon wants Eddie to stop holding so much of himself back and just split him in two like he probably could.

He just wants to be enough for him. He's never going to be enough.

"I can't," Waylon whispers. "That's all. I can't take anymore."

"Okay, darling. Are you crying? Waylon, am I hurting you?"

Waylon slaps his shoulders lightly, shaking his head. "I'm fine. It feels good. You feel good. I just wish I could—"

"It's okay. I promise."

"You sure?"

He nods, "Waylon do you know how hard it is for me to not finish too soon? I don't need to be in you all the way to get pleasure."

"Okay. Can you—can you move now?"

Eddie nods, moving slowly. The tip of his dick keeps hitting Waylon's sweet spot, and he shudders every time. He isn't over his first orgasm yet and this is too much. His eyes close to keep them from rolling back into his head, but the noises still come out unfiltered. He's afraid to touch himself despite how desperately he wants to. He thinks he'll cum the moment he does.

Eddie speeds up, never going further into him. He pulls back a little bit, but it barely helps. There's too much of him. He's so big around that Waylon can barely move. He's just laying there, feeling Eddie thrust into him, hearing his grunts, his swears over and over. Eddie doesn’t swear unless he’s angry or when they’re having sex. All that chivalry, that gentlemen act, disappears the moment they’re together. It’s funny, almost. Before, Waylon had sat on his lap in the motel, whispered that he wanted Eddie to fuck him, and Eddie had chided him for being so vulgar. _Make love,_ he had said, _you want us to make love._

No. He didn’t.

But God—

Waylon thinks he loves Eddie right now. It slaps him hard when he sees Eddie's eyes flutter closed for a moment. And he shoves it away, terrified of this streak of _I love you I love you I love you_ going through his head. He can't tell if he means he loves Eddie fucking him or Eddie's cock or Eddie's fingers or tongue or if he just means _Eddie._

Waylon doesn't realize he's cumming at first until Eddie's hand is on him, stroking him as he ejaculates. He confused the burst of pleasure with the thought of love and his chest is rising and falling too fast. He can't think. Eddie is still thrusting inside of him faster than he was before and his brain is left in a fog of sex and love.

"F-fuck," Waylon whimpers. His body can't handle this or Eddie and he can feel cum leaking out of his still-soft cock.

"Again?" He hears Eddie say. His voice is distant. All there is is pleasure. All there is is the thrust of a cock inside of him and love on the tip of his tongue and semen coating his bare stomach.

_Again._

  
  


Eddie cums when Waylon cums, which is hardly a feat. Waylon is cumming a third time when Eddie can't stop himself anymore. He was trying to get himself to last. He didn't want it to end and Waylon feels so fucking good, so much better than his memories or his hand.

He cums inside of Waylon, slowing his movements until he grows soft and pulls out, his finger coming up to stop the cum from leaking out of him. He wants it there. He likes the idea of Waylon filled up with his seed. If Eddie could cum more than once, he surely would, every time inside of Waylon until there was no stopping it from spilling out.

He turns his attention to the mess Waylon made of himself. His fingers run through the semen on his stomach, stroking it out along the clean skin that was somehow left untouched. He presses the stickiness against Waylon's nipples, circling them until Waylon let's out a pained moan.

"Eddie, I can't. Not again. Don't make me cum again or you’re going to be fucking a corpse."

He smiles softly, gathering some cum in his fingers, pressing it against Waylon's mouth. He accepts it like he always does, but his tongue is lazy when it cleans him off. Eddie holds back a moan. He hates how much he likes Waylon eating his own cum. It could get him hard again. He could fuck Waylon's thighs, pressed tight around Eddie's cock. He would have his break and Eddie would have his second round. The cum would lube it so well…

But he doesn't. He gathers the cum, pressing it against Waylon's hole where his own is leaking out of him and he wishes—

He wishes he could feel Waylon's cum inside of him. He feels a shock of shame and resentment for this. He doesn't want Waylon to fuck him he just wants the feeling of cum spilling out of him. Right? _Right?_ There’s a sliver of disgust in him at the thought of Waylon fucking him. Not disgust that’s felt the right way. Disgust at how much he wants it, not at the fact it’s Waylon, that Waylon is a man, that he should hate men.

He thinks he does.

He thinks Waylon is going to be his only exception.

"We need to shower again," Eddie says, stroking himself, unable to stop. Waylon's cum coats him, he can taste it on his tongue when he presses it inside of his mouth.

"Separately." Waylon says.

"Yes. Separately."

  
  


— _Separately._

But Eddie still thinks about him in the shower, hoping the cold water will take away the need to go back to him again. He knows Waylon doesn’t want to have sex again. In the way he said _Separately_ to ensure it. He doesn’t know what’s gotten over him. Maybe it’s because it’s been so long. He hasn’t touched Waylon the way he wanted to touch him in five months. And he could’ve lasted those months if there had been an explanation for their break. But there wasn’t. There was nothing.

_There has to be a reason._

Eddie bites his lip, leaning against the side of the shower wall, a hand wrapped around himself while he thinks about Waylon like that, laying on the bed, exhausted and spent. Sweaty, with his cock limp and his abdomen sticky with cum. What Eddie wouldn’t give to be able to do him again, well past his point of pleasure. So on edge that he has nothing holding him back. To see Waylon shuddering and whimpering and still clinging onto Eddie.

He thinks of Waylon at Mount Massive, on his lap, grinding against him, begging for more.

_I promised I wouldn’t hurt you._

But how much he had wanted to. He wanted to fuck Waylon until he broke. Until neither of them could be anything else.

  
  
  


They don’t talk on their walk to work, standing a foot away from each other. They don’t talk when they cross paths when they take their breaks at the same time, sitting beside each other. Not quite meeting the other’s eyes. They don’t talk because Waylon doesn’t know how to speak anymore.

Waylon wonders if Eddie is thinking the same thing he is. How embarrassed he is, shameful and disgusted and hating himself. Eddie should. He spent the entirety of their time at the asylum wanting a wife and he just has a broken boy instead.

But he can’t ask. He can’t even feel relieved about being home from work because there’s no longer something forcing the divide between them.

Waylon sets his things down on the counter, his jacket on the hook by the door. “I need to shower.”

“Waylon, you showered twice this morning—”

“I need to shower,” he repeats, refusing to look at him.

He makes his way to the bathroom, shutting the door behind himself and triple checking that it’s locked. He rests his forehead against the wood, cursing himself for forgetting clothes to change into, but he can’t leave and go get them. Eddie isn’t going to let him walk away like that a second time.

Waylon turns the water on, letting it heat up, steam filling the bathroom as he sheds his clothes and gets in. He scrubs his skin until it feels raw and angry. He has all these traces of Eddie on his skin and he needs them gone. He needs everything on him gone.

He sits down on the floor, pressing his face against his arms, letting the water fill up the tub around him. He’s blocking the drain more than he means to, but he doesn’t care. He has a scream caught in his throat and he can’t get it out and he’s exhausted and sore and he can feel tears streaking down his cheeks.

_Dirty. Gross. Disgusting._ **_Whore._ **

“Waylon?”

“What?” he says, his voice shaking.

“You’ve been in there for two hours, is everything okay?”

Two hours?

Time really flies when he’s consumed by this.

“I’m—I don’t have clothes.”

“I can get your robe for you.”

“Okay. Thank you. Just…”

“I’ll leave it on the door handle. I’ll be in the living room.”

He nods, moving to the side. His feet leave the top of the drain, letting the water swirl down fast. He hadn’t realized how full the tub got. He was too busy thinking about how nice it would be to peel his skin off, to run away and start clean. As though telling people a different name or lying about where he was born would do anything. It’s not doing anything _now._

He waits until it’s empty before he gets up and dries off. He carefully opens the door only far enough to get the robe, pulling the soft blue fleece around his body. This one isn’t his. There are stripes on the cuffs in white instead of gray. It was a detail only Eddie had noticed, pointing it out to him one night when they were hanging them on the hooks behind the door of their bedroom. He probably wasn’t looking when he grabbed it. Or maybe he was. He likes the idea of their robes matching. Waylon didn’t mind it either. It was before they came here. It was one of the few purchases they made in that tiny town. Something to link them together, like they needed anything else.

Waylon wraps himself up on it, pressing the sleeve against his face. Cologne and laundry detergent. That layer of unmistakably Eddie.

He sneaks as quietly as he can to the bedroom, closing and locking the door behind him as he gets dressed, but he hesitates. Lingers with the robe on. He misses it. Cuddling up against Eddie. Breathing in that scent of his. The soft reassurance that what happened happened and that it’s all over, too.

Eddie is at once a reminder and a cure and those two things are both terrible and wonderful things. He is made up of contradictions, through and through.

  
  


_— Eddie is killing him. There’s a knife driven into his stomach, cutting upwards, spilling out his intestines. He’s trying to scream but he can’t, and when Eddie sees him try, he presses his arm against Waylon’s windpipe to silence him._

_“Shut the fuck up. You’re such a whiny bitch. Just shut the fuck up for once.”_

  
  


It’s the third time this week that Waylon has retreated from the bed and hidden away in the closet, but it’s the eighteenth day in a row that they’ve tormented him. He and Eddie have barely talked. Waylon’s learned if he outright refuses, Eddie will eventually stop trying to force the words out of him. Except when Waylon has nightmares. If he wakes Eddie up, they’ll have to resort to arguing. Waylon has to scream at him to leave him alone for him to stop.

He creeps over to the closet, finds the inside filled with boxes. _Shit_. He forgot. The empty boxes for the furniture they’d gotten to fill all the empty space in their apartment over the last month has piled up inside of here. Eddie didn’t want to deal with it. Waylon didn’t either. Out of sight, out of mind.

Waylon turns back to the bed, looking at Eddie’s sleeping form. His hand has stretched out to the space where Waylon was. He could curl back up there. Press close to Eddie like he hasn’t in a while. But then he thinks about Eddie in his dream and he thinks about the feeling of regret that he got after he allowed himself to indulge in having Eddie beyond just a roommate with shared trauma.

He feels stupid for needing safety. He feels stupid for needing Eddie.

So he crawls underneath the bed, hiding toward the back, pulling the blanket around him until he cocoons himself up safe and hidden in the shadows of the bed. Close to Eddie. But not with him.

He can’t be with him again.

  
  


“Waylon?”

He can't find him. He's not in the apartment. Eddie has looked everywhere. Panic rises in his chest as he tears open the closet and shoves aside the shower curtain.

_Waylon is dead._ He knows it. Something happened. He left Eddie and someone found him on the streets and murdered him. He has images flashing through his head of Waylon bleeding out. Someone cutting him open, blood soaked clothes and Waylon yelling for help—

"Eddie?"

He jumps, turning around, "Waylon, where were you?"

"Out."

"Out?" Eddie stands up, moving toward him, his voice and his movements coated with an anger he can’t shake. "You didn't leave a note, you—"

"I'm sorry. I needed fresh air."

"Open a window, Waylon, you don’t _leave_."

“You told me not to open the windows,” he replies. "And you don't control me Eddie. Not anymore."

"No," he says, standing up. "If I did, you would talk to me. You wouldn't disappear. You wouldn't look at me like you are now."

"How am I looking at you, Eddie?"

He doesn't want to say it. Saying it would leave Waylon to confirm what Eddie is seeing. But he's looking at Waylon watching him with this anger and resentment like he _hates_ him.

"Like you were waiting for this. For me to get angry with you. To prove you right? That I'm the same as I was then?"

"That's not true."

"No. That's why you still touch me and kiss me and don't look like you're disgusted with me after we have sex, yeah?"

"Eddie that has nothing to do with you."

"So you were the same with Lisa?"

"W-what—?"

"You say her name in your sleep all the time. Who was she to you? Your girlfriend before Murkoff hired you?"

"She's… my… wife."

Wife.

**_W I F E._ **

"Fucking hell, Eddie, are you okay?"

He looks down to his hand, the coffee mug in it broken and shards pressed against his skin. He vaguely recalls slamming it against the counter. Or the sound of it. He doesn't remember doing it. He barely registers the pain, only focusing on Waylon’s words.

"You have a wife."

"You're bleeding, Eddie."

"You have a wife."

"Yes."

"You have—"

Waylon's hand touches the side of his face, "Eddie… I'm sorry."

"For the wife or for leaving or for not telling me about either of those things?"

"For everything. Now can you let me look at your hand? You might need a doctor."

"Never needed a doctor at Mount Massive."

"Yes. You did. I'm going to take care of this, Eddie," he says. "And we can talk, okay? But don't do this again. Promise me."

"I promise."

Waylon gets up to move for the first aid kit when Eddie catches his wrist, pulling him to a stop, “Waylon. I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For being cruel to you. You’re right. I don’t own you. I don’t control you. I shouldn’t have said that. I was worried. I thought you were dead. I took it out on you, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, Eddie.”

“It’s not. You don’t deserve to be treated like that, Waylon.”

Waylon nods, going silent when Eddie finally lets him go. But he doesn’t believe that it’s okay. Not yet. He saw the fear in Waylon’s face. The same fear he had before. Eddie slipped back into that persona, even though it was just a little bit. For a moment, he was the angry Groom ready to destroy a man to have a wife. He’ll do better next time. He promises himself that. He has to be better next time.

  
  


His hand is okay. No stitches necessary. Even real gauze is wrapped around his hand instead of fabric strips. Waylon was very careful in it, and he watches Eddie from the kitchen. He has his hand in front of him, light passing through bandaged fingertips.

He was right. A little. That Eddie's anger was something he was waiting for. He's been too… too _good_ for too long. He keeps waiting for the monster to appear.

Waylon moves over to him, the dishes put away, the remnants of the broken cup and spilt coffee gone.

"Can I sit here?" he asks.

Eddie looks at him, nods. Waylon hesitates before he moves onto the couch, straddling Eddie's lap and leaning against his chest.

"What are you doing, Waylon?"

"Give me a second."

"Waylon?"

"I miss being your darling," he whispers. "I miss being yours."

" _You_ pulled away from _me_."

"I know."

"And you already belong to someone else."

"Not anymore. I'm yours. Completely."

"Then I need you to talk to me."

He nods, deciding to offer as little as he can manage right now, "I… have a wife. But I can't go back to her."

"Because of me?"

"Partially."

"Is that why you stopped touching me?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know."

"Waylon…" he touches Waylon's chin, forcing him to look at him. "Darling, please."

_Darling_.

"I have problems when it comes to sex sometimes."

"What kinds?"

"It's a cycle of… wanting it and only it. Hating myself after. Hating the thought of it. Back to wanting it again," he says. "It wasn't like that with Lisa. It's not… like that with women."

"Just me?"

He shakes his head. Not just Eddie. It's men in general. It's the fact that when he was in college his roommate was in the hospital for three weeks after a rumor passed around that he was gay. It's his friend when he was fourteen choking him and forcing himself on him. It's like it erases that. Hypersexualizes himself or tears him down to nothing. It's worse with Eddie. He wants him so much and he hates that other version of him and he can't believe he's being so torn into two. 

"I can't… be with you and not be with you."

"You want to make love."

"Yes," he whispers. "But after it's… hard. To be around you."

"How about instead of you running away from me, you let me help you?"

"I don't know how to do that. I don’t know how to be somebody worthy of being loved.”

“You’re already worthy,” Eddie whispers. “I already love you. We can take it slow. As slow as you want. But you can’t shut me out and you can’t disappear like that again.”

“I won’t.”

"Thank you."

"Eddie?" He says, tracing the scar on his cheek. "You said you loved me."

"I did?"

He nods, "Did you mean it?"

"Yes."

"If you want to say it more often, though, I think I'd like that. But I don't think I'm ready to say it back."

"That's quite alright, darling."

"You sure?"

"Yes," Eddie says, kissing him again. "I love you. I want to be good for you. If you need time I'll give you time."

_Stop_ , he wants to say. _Stop and go back_ . _Stop being charming and kind and sensitive._ He knows how to deal with someone scary and cruel. He doesn't know how to do this. Lisa was perfect and tender but she was—

Separate. Different. An outlier contrasting the world.

Now Eddie is, too.

"Do you want to take a nap with me, Eddie?"

"Of course."

  
  


— _It’s quiet. Finally. A few hours of nothing. No dreams. Just the darkness. Just sleep._

_Eddie makes him quiet._

  
  


“Good morning, darling.”

Waylon blinks against the light of the sun, streaming in through a gap in the curtains and blinds he can never seem to block all the way. “It’s past noon.”

“Oh,” Eddie says quietly. “Then good afternoon, beautiful.”

“Beautiful?” he replies. “That’s new.”

“It’s true.”

“Is it?” Waylon asks.

Eddie nods, “Can I kiss you?”

“Because that would prove it?”

“Oh, I think so.”

Waylon smiles. He thinks it’s the first genuine smile he’s had in a long time, and he leans forward, kissing Eddie softly, letting him pull him closer. This tiny spark inside of him lights up, feels safe and comforted with Eddie’s arms wrapped around him, holding onto him.

_Don’t let me go,_ he wants to say.

Eddie was right. Back on those first nights that he kept Waylon captive. Waylon needed him. He didn’t want to admit it at the time, because it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true in the way Eddie was saying it then. Waylon would’ve rather died than be held captive by someone like that Other Eddie that wanted to kill him. He would’ve rather died instantly then ever have to endure the kind of torture that The Groom inflicted upon his victims. But he’s glad he survived, too. He’s glad he got to see and know _this_ Eddie.

“Eddie,” he says quietly, pulling back. “Thank you.”

“For?”

“For protecting me,” he traces the shape of the scar on his cheek, the one he received when he went looking to find a cane for him, back when he struggled to walk. He still does—it’s just not the same. He doesn’t require the help as often. “At Mount Massive.”

“What?”

“You kept me safe.”

“I didn’t—” Eddie shakes his head. “I wasn’t keeping you safe, Waylon. I was keeping you alive until I could kill you. Until he could. Until—Fuck, Waylon—”

“Eddie?”

“Don’t say that again,” Eddie says quietly. “Don’t thank me for kidnapping you again. Don’t thank me for hurting you.”

“I—”

“I’m serious, Waylon.”

“Okay. I won’t say it again. I promise,” he presses a chaste kiss against Eddie’s cheek. “Are you mad at me?”

“No. I’m mad at myself,” he says, his voice quiet. His hand is on Waylon’s stomach, tracing the shape of the faded graphic on his tee. “I hurt you. I don’t want you to be grateful for that. And I don’t want to think about it. I’d prefer if we met in a different way.”

“Then let’s pretend that we didn’t meet there,” Waylon says quietly. “How do you think we could’ve met?”

“We probably didn’t live anywhere near each other—”

“So? Let’s say we did,” he replies. “Please, Eddie.”

“Fine,” he says, like it’s a chore. “I’ll play your little game, darling.”

  
  


He makes Waylon laugh. He doesn’t know if he’s ever heard Waylon laugh before, not like this. He’s heard Waylon’s snarky laughs, scoffs, sarcastic remarks. But he laughs, laying beside Eddie, listening to him spin a story about how they would meet at a pet store. Waylon seems like he would have a dog. Eddie would be picking up treats for a cat. They’d meet in the aisle with the collars, teasing each other about the collars they’re picking out. He doesn’t even know what he said that made Waylon laugh, and he doesn’t care, because Eddie is going to make him laugh again someday. And Eddie knows no matter what, he _does_ love him.

He knew before when he was in the asylum with him that there was this layer of obsession. Something about his desire to have Waylon that wasn’t a real love. Something twisted and wrong. And it fell away and rebuilt the more they spent time together, it solidified into this worry inside of his chest, and when he said the words, he was terrified that they were wrong. He’s never been in love. But he knows now that he was right.

Why else would he feel like this, looking at Waylon laugh like that, knowing he was the one that caused it?

“See?” he says. “Beautiful.”

Waylon smiles up at him. Big and bright and perfect. Eddie will always want him to be happy like this, but it is especially nice to see after such a long time when neither of them could move past this blockage between them.

And really—

Eddie would be fine never having Waylon again as long as he was happy like _this,_ laughing like _this._


	2. Chapter 2

_ — Everytime Waylon wakes from a nightmare and he won’t tell Eddie what’s wrong, he thinks about prying it out of him. Something physical and violent. A forcing of words to come out of his mouth. Hand wrapped around his throat as if the threat of death is enough to spill his secrets. It’s not. _

  
  


Eddie makes Waylon a place to sleep. Something more comfortable than in closets or under beds. He worries it’s not going to be the same, but when he brings Waylon over to show him his plan, and Waylon smiles at him and tells him he likes the idea, he kisses Eddie softly.

They have a walk in closet off their living room. Something tiny that might’ve once been a nice home for clutter, but he empties it out, leaving it just big enough for a bed when he replaces the bi-fold doors with something that locks from the inside. Waylon wears the spare key around his neck on a chain, Eddie keeps his on the ring with the others. It’s dark in the small space, barely enough room to stand when the doors are closed, but the low shelves and darkness feel comforting, almost, being closed in.

Eddie remembers having enough toys to fit into a chest. He remembers dumping out all of his things, hiding them under his bed to make a hiding spot in the chest, only keeping the lid propped up enough to spy. It didn’t help. When somebody wanted to find him, they always could. But nobody will find Waylon here. He’ll make sure of that. He’ll die before he lets someone hurt him again.

“Thank you, Eddie,” he whispers quietly.

He wraps his arms around his waist, presses a kiss to his forehead, “Better than the floor?”

“Yes,” he says. “Even better with you here tonight.”

“You want me to stay, darling?”

He nods, pulling Eddie towards the bed. He lays between Eddie and the wall, protected on every side, resting in the dark with his head on Eddie’s shoulder. Neither of them fall asleep for a long time. They are tracing messages back and forth on each other’s bodies. Lazy movements. He doesn’t know if Waylon is telling him anything, but Eddie is writing the same thing over and over again. Cursive loops, drawn out and exaggerated shapes.

He wishes that he could marry this man someday.

  
  


— He doesn’t know if it classifies as the same kind of intrusive thoughts that he has when he’s at work or alone, but it shoves it’s way into the forefront of his brain nearly constantly. Waylon in a tux. Waylon with a tie around his throat. Waylon with a ring on his finger. The two of them with a baby. A hundred kids running around. Arguing over birthday presents and their baby’s Halloween costume before they’re old enough to decide for themselves. He doesn’t classify these thoughts as bad, but he can’t in good heart classify them as pleasant, either. They are a kind of torture, showing him all the things he isn’t allowed to have.

But when he’s with Waylon, watching him prepare dinner or when they part their ways for the nights that Waylon wants to be alone, he always feels this small moment of happiness. He might not get everything, but he has the important part. He has Waylon.

  
  


Waylon comes home late, tired and exhausted, but he doesn’t go to the bedroom or the couch. He immediately walks over to where Eddie is at the sink washing the dishes, and he leans against him, wrapping his arms around his waist tight and exhaling a soft sigh. He feels safer around Eddie, but it isn’t the relief of protection he’s feeling right now, even if it’s one of the first times he’s had to go to work without him. Eddie walked him there, pressed a kiss against his forehead, and said goodbye, but he didn’t walk Waylon home. Waylon didn’t want him to. He’s supposed to be an adult that can take care of himself.

And he is.

Sometimes he wishes he wasn’t, though.

It would be easier, being young again. To start from scratch and have the knowledge of what mistakes to avoid and what kind of people to let into his life. He’d be happier now.

But he wouldn’t know Eddie, would he?

He thinks about Eddie’s little fake version of themselves, so vastly different than the two of them. It isn’t the version that Waylon would come up with. He’d make himself the savior. He’d come to Mount Massive and pull Eddie out of there and the two of them could run away. Eddie wouldn’t know who he was, but Waylon wouldn’t need him to. He’d save him, rather than failing him like he had in real life.

“Darling?”

_ I love you,  _ he mouths soundlessly.  _ I’m sorry. _

“I’m going to bed,” he says instead. “I missed you today.”

Eddie takes a step back from the sink, turning to face him. He tips Waylon’s chin up with a gloved hand, wet rubber irritating his skin as Eddie leans down to kiss him. He wants to stay like this, though. Safe. Happy.

Is he happy?

_ Yes.  _ When it’s just him and Eddie, yes.

“You should eat dinner,” Eddie says quietly. “I cooked. And I know you’re always hungry when you get home.”

“I’m tired,” Waylon repeats. It’s a lie, but he can’t tell Eddie the truth. “But thank you.”

It’s been a late night. Working over to help cover for another employee. Normally he’s home a little earlier. Normally he has enough time to eat and lay on the couch with Eddie and feel his hand rubbing up and down on his thigh making him want something they both agreed they wouldn’t have quite yet.

But it’s tempting. Even now. With Eddie’s hand on his back, wet against his shirt. He had been thinking about him today. How much he missed him. How badly he wants to make up for lost time. How many weeks has it been since they were together? And it was Waylon’s idea. But he can’t break his rule. He needs to go slowly. He has to.

“Are you sure?”

“Mhm,” he mumbles, because now he is thinking about how nice it would be to stay up, and if he opens his mouth he will say the opposite of what he needs to.

“Goodnight, darling.”

Waylon kisses him again before he leaves his arms, retreating down the hallway to his room, feeling needy and wanting.

  
  


He lays in the bed by himself, curled up against the wall with the blanket drawn up over his face, his eyes squeezed shut. The hours pass by as the lights outside his room turn off, when the quiet of the city comes in. He tried to sleep but he kept thinking about the feeling of Eddie’s hand on his back, on his chin, their lips together. He slips from his bed after he’s sure Eddie’s asleep, creeping into the bathroom and closing the door quietly behind him. He sinks to the floor, illuminated by the soft blue glow of a night-light they got to help ease their eyes for midnight trips. He wanted to do this hours ago, but he didn’t think he could keep himself quiet, and he didn’t want to risk Eddie coming to his door asking to stay with him.

He could’ve feigned nightmares. The fantasy he reaches for is within the realm of them. He has other dreams of Eddie in that place that aren’t bad. Ones where Eddie pushes his legs apart and pounds into him hard the way Waylon wishes he could handle now.

But he has one dream, maybe a fantasy, where there are two of Eddies. One ruthless and rough with him, the other gentle and reassuring. The two of them trading off fucking him so they can stave off their climaxes and make it last as long as possible. But they never do anything to stop Waylon from cumming. That’s just like in reality, when Eddie is obsessed with making him cum as many times as he can manage.

Waylon pushes his briefs down, his hand palming his cock gently as he takes it in his hand, stroking on it slowly. He thinks about Eddie in his mouth, slowly and carefully drawing in and out of him. He thinks about the other, thrusting into him hard, leaving bruises on his side. The two of them using him until he’s spent and then using him some more. In his fantasy, he’s riding one of them for a long time, his legs shaking and his arms trembling in their effort to keep his body up, too weak from orgasming that he can’t hold himself any longer. And when he finally falls against Eddie’s chest, his hand comes up, drawing a careful line down his spine, fucking him slow and deep as he tries to catch his breath.

Before he can, though, the other Eddie is there, spreading him apart, pushing in deep. Both of their cocks filling him up impossibly full, stretching him impossibly wide.

_ “Relax,”  _ his Eddie will say quietly.

And Waylon will because he wants this, because he trusts them, because the nice Eddie is his Eddie and the rougher one isn’t the Groom, but he’s the strange in-between that slapped Waylon across the face and called him a whore when they slept together in that dirty room he was chained to. He can trust both of them, but he trusts this one more, the one pressing a kiss against the side of his head, the one touching his skin lightly. 

And in his fantasy, he can take both of them even though he can’t even take one of them in reality. Waylon’s fingers inside of him aren’t nearly enough to replicate it, but he cums anyway, thinking about the two of them fucking him hard. He leans back against the wall, breathing out slowly, one hand sticky with cum and the other with fingers still inside of him, curling against his walls begging him to go again.

  
  


—  _ It’s not right,  _ he thinks. But he heard Waylon get up. He’s not that quiet, and Eddie can’t sleep. He has a hard time falling asleep alone. So he followed him, his time at Mount Massive teaching him how best to creep around in the dark, even though he doesn’t want to admit it. He was just going to ask Waylon if he could sleep in the bed with him, though he was going to find a better way to phrase it. But then he heard a sound on the other side of the door. Something that was almost pained, until he took a step closer and pressed his ear against it and recognized it.

Him and Waylon had sex enough times to know exactly what the sound is. And Eddie hesitates there for a long moment before he thinks he should walk away. It’s wrong. It’s not right. It’s perverted. But his hand is touching the front of his pajamas when he hears the breathy moan and he turns around fast, making his way back to his own room. He leans against the door, forgoing any lead-up and stroking himself roughly. Thinking about Waylon on the other side of the apartment, whispering Eddie’s name and jerking himself off. The fantasy of Waylon getting off is enough for Eddie, but after he cums he feels the guilt wash over him for eavesdropping, and he has to wait there until he’s sure Waylon has gone back to bed to clean himself up.

He’s never felt this way before. So uncontrollably attached to someone. Least of all a guy. He doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t know what it is about Waylon that has him so head over heels in love, in lust.

  
  


“Can I ask you something, Waylon?”

“Of course,” he says, trying not to meet his eyes. It was one thing having dreams about two versions of Eddie, it was another to play it out in his head and get off to it. It’s been a few weeks, but every time he sees Eddie, he feels a little more embarrassed than he had before. “What is it?”

“You’ve… dated before.”

“Yes.”

“Men?”

“Hm?” Waylon snaps his head up. “Why?”

“Because I’m curious.”

Waylon smiles softly, “I didn’t. I never dated a guy.”

“So I’m your first?”

“You’re not the first guy I’ve slept with, no, but you are the first I’d call my boyfriend.”

At the word, Eddie smiles like just the word  _ boyfriend  _ could make him the happiest person alive. And then it falters. And then it fades.

“You slept with strangers.” Not a question.

“Yes. Does that bother you?” Waylon asks. “You know I was married.”

_ Was.  _ As though he can pretend he isn’t anymore. Just because he lost the ring when he was running for his life at Mount Massive doesn’t mean his divorce with Lisa was ever real. Just an emotional thing to survive his new life, to excuse his love for Eddie.

“How many?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t counting,” he whispers. “Eddie, are you mad at me?”

“No. I was just curious. Maybe a little jealous. That’s all. I thought… for a moment, it sounded nice. That we could’ve been each other’s firsts.”

“You’re still my first boyfriend. Just not the first guy I’ve fucked.”

Eddie doesn’t smile or laugh, even though Waylon was hoping for it. Sometimes he looks so dangerously serious that Waylon doesn’t know what to do. Eddie’s smiles are rare and his laughter is even rarer, and Waylon just wants him to be happy.

“So,” Waylon says quietly. “You’ve never slept with a guy before me?”

“No.”

“Girls?”

Eddie looks up at him, a hand on his face, covering his mouth.

_ Oh. _

“You were a virgin.”

Eddie stares at him for a long moment before he finally nods slowly, “Yes.”

_ Oh. _

“But you didn’t—”

“I watched a lot of…” he shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You played it off so well.”

Eddie’s face looks red, but Waylon is trying to bite back a smile. It’s kind of cute, thinking that Eddie was a virgin. He doesn’t seem like it. He was so in charge. He always seemed like he knew what he was doing. Could watching porn really explain all that? Could being in Mount Massive, the Groom persona taking on all this violent behavior, really cover all that up?

“Eddie, I asked you…” he trails off for a second. “I asked you if me being a guy bothered you and you said no. Did you know you were…?”

“No. And I’m not...  _ gay.” _

“I didn’t say you were.”

“I don’t know what I am.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

Eddie shakes his head, and now it’s impossible to ignore the blush across his cheeks, “I don’t think I want to talk about this anymore, darling.”

“We don’t have to.”

Eddie nods, getting up and leaving the room. Waylon chews on his bottom lip, watching him walk away.

  
  


Later that night, Waylon lays on the bed beside him, his hands folded on his stomach as he looks up at the ceiling, “I’m sorry I took your virginity.”

“This again?” Eddie says quietly.

“Yes,” Waylon turns to face him. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have done it. Or I would’ve been less…”

“Vulgar?”

Waylon smiles, “Yeah. Did I steal your first kiss, too, Eddie?”

“No. There was a girl in high school. She kissed me. She tried to do more… and I pushed her away. I wish you were, though. The first.”

“Was she the only girl you kissed?”

“Yes.”

“But no guys either? One kiss when you were in high school until now?”

“Yes,” he says quietly. He had approached the girl after hearing rumors about her being the school whore. He hated how they said it, he hated how his mother knew, but he wanted something else than what he suffered from. He wanted something to differentiate it.

It was the reason why he became obsessed with watching porn online and scrolling through pictures. It was a way to numb the pain. The more times he found something, it was like it was replacing what happened when he was a kid. It was the same with Waylon. He wanted him so badly so often because each time they were together, it pushed the other ones a little further away. He used all that knowledge that he gathered like he was a connoisseur of it. He talked the way they talked in his favorite ones, he did what he liked seeing the best.

“How did you know you liked guys?”

“I don’t,” Eddie says. “I don’t know if I do.”

“But me being one doesn’t bother you?”

Eddie doesn’t know. Sometime in college he noticed that he was paying attention to the men in porn. He liked watching their cocks. He didn’t pay attention to the face or the body they fucked into. He doesn’t know what that means. He never knew what it meant. He still doesn’t. But when he realized at Mount Massive that Waylon was a guy, it didn’t change anything. Probably because he always knew, deep down.

“I don’t want to have to figure out what I am,” Eddie says quietly. “I don’t want it to matter because I don’t want to lose you.”

“That’s fine. You don’t need to know. You can just be you and I’ll just be me.”

“And we can be us.” Waylon smiles, and Eddie leans forward and kisses him quickly, like he can steal it, “You really thought I covered up my inexperience well?”

“Oh, yes,” Waylon says. “You’re very confident.”

Eddie smiles, and Waylon smiles, and he holds onto his hand and presses a kiss against the knuckles and the palm and he holds him there for along moment, wondering how soon Waylon will leave him because it’s too dangerous for them to be sharing a bed with a topic like this left between them. They’ll break their rule. Eddie really wants them to break their rule.

Eddie leans in close, curling up as small as he can manage against Waylon’s side. But he is too big of a man and Waylon is so small sometimes that he knows it’s worthless to attempt it. But he likes Waylon’s arms around him, holding him close, and he likes the feeling of smiling after it’s been so long. He likes the smell of Waylon’s skin as he buries his face against his neck and closes his eyes, leaving one lonely kiss against Waylon’s throat.

_ Slowly.  _ They’re going slowly.

  
  


Eddie presses another kiss towards the collar of his shirt, one of his hands trailing along the side of Waylon’s torso, pushing at the fabric of his shirt. As if Waylon needed the little nudge of reminder of how much he wants him. “Eddie…”

“You should go back to your room,” he says quietly, pulling away.

“I should.” They stay in the quiet for a moment, looking at each other. Waylon bites his lip, brings his hands up to draw across Eddie’s features, resting his thumb over Eddie’s mouth, “Or I could stay.”

“I thought we were going slowly.”

“It’s been long enough, hasn’t it?”

I don’t know. Has it?”

He nods, "Maybe if we just... go slow. And don't... say or do certain things."

He watches Eddie closely and for a moment it seems as though he doesn't understand. That sometimes, even though Waylon likes his fingers in his mouth or the taste of Eddie's cum on his lips, it only makes it worse. Especially if Eddie is telling him how perfect he looks like that.

"Okay. No vulgarity."

Waylon smiles a little, a small laugh escaping him, "Yeah. No vulgarity."

They can make love like Eddie always says before he loses control and throws the rules out the window. It'll be for the both of them. Waylon won't whine and beg for things he knows will hurt him. And maybe, in a year or two, he can have all that back without the baggage attached. There isn't anything wrong with the kinks and things they like. It's just too soon to feel so used in that way. When he was in Lisa, eventually he started to feel okay wanting things that didn’t feel so completely vanilla. He just has to relearn all this with Eddie. He needs to go slowly. He just doesn’t  _ want  _ to.

"I can kiss you though?" Eddie asks.

"Kissing is highly encouraged, Eddie."

"Then I suppose we'll do just fine."

Waylon smiles, unable to stop even when Eddie leans forward to kiss him. He pulls Waylon close, his hand moving slowly and gently over his back before resting on the back of his thighs to try and bring him closer. He loses track of how long the kiss goes for, he is too in tune to the softness of it, the gentle hum that Eddie makes when Waylon deepens it. He becomes increasingly aware of how his body moves against Eddie's, rocking against him. But he's not supposed to say anything. He isn't supposed to tell Eddie he wants him to hurry up.  _ Slow _ .

_ Slow, slow, slow. _

Eddie breaks the kiss, running his thumb along Waylon's lip. One of his hands has moved to his side, touching the skin underneath his shirt, moving upward. The gentle movement of his hand makes his breath catch. It’s so different from before.

Sex at the motel was a near constant. Sex after they left Mount Massive never needed any kind of foreplay. It was rushed and fast. There was little for them to exist outside of it, because it was such a nice distraction. Waylon consented for a reason, and it wasn't just because he saw Eddie as this man that saved him and helped him out. Eddie is, albeit unfortunately sometimes, exactly the type of guy he would seek out before. Someone bigger and stronger. Someone that Waylon knew could hurt him if they wanted to, but he always had the ability to stop it if he wanted.

"Waylon," he says quietly. "I love you."

He wants to say it back. It's stuck on the tip of his tongue.

But he tries and he can't. All he can do is lean his head against Eddie's and hold him close.

"I feel it," Waylon says quietly.

"But you can't say it."

He shakes his head. He has only trusted those words to a small select few. It isn't that Eddie isn't part of that group, it's that it's hard to say them when he's voiced them so rarely. Him and Lisa argued constantly about it. How difficult it was for him to say it. How if he couldn't, maybe it wasn't true. He has to wonder if she was right, especially considering how much he knows he loves Eddie now, to the point where he can hardly remember loving her.

It’s so cruel and unfair to her. Waylon is so cruel and unfair.

He thinks maybe he's more like Eddie than he thought. 

"I do," he repeats. "More than anything, though."

Eddie nods. Maybe he believes him. Maybe he doesn't.

Eddie leans back, pulling Waylon’s shirt up, leaving kisses along his collarbone and his shoulder. He is slow and careful as he makes his way down Waylon’s torso, pulling at the hem of his pants. His mouth resumes kissing his thighs, moving further and further down until it rests against the scar on his leg. Eddie hesitates there, pressing a second kiss against it.

"I'm sorry, darling."

"I forgive you, Eddie."

Eddie comes back to him, kissing him long and slow and Waylon's body curves against his. Naked skin scratched and soothed by denim and soft cotton. This is what he wanted, though. This is how he always wanted to be treated. This is how the Eddie in his fantasy touched him and kissed him. Like Waylon was what mattered and not the endgoal.

When Eddie pulls back, he undresses slowly. Waylon thinks about teasing him that he's putting on a show for him, but Eddie looks so serious he isn't sure if the joke would land well, and once Eddie's shirt is off, he's captivated by all those scars all over again. How much pain he's gone through. How much pain he's inflicted onto others. And Waylon's forgiven him. Easily, like those lives meant nothing. But how many of those doctors and orderlies were like Jeremy Blaire, fucking over and harming people for enjoyment or profit? How many of those victims, though, were like Waylon with no way to get out alive? Forced to stay working for Murkoff because of their reach?

Such a complicated man. And still such an easy one to love.

"Is this okay?" Eddie asks, his hand touching his thigh, spreading his legs open.

Waylon nods, waits for Eddie's fingers to touch him. They’re cold, moving slow and careful. Curving against him, pushing deep. Eddie’s fingers are long, and they easily reach back to touch his prostate, and each time they brush it, Waylon’s body curves upwards against his touch, trying to get more from him, trying to get him to speed up. Eddie doesn't work fast, and Waylon is panting and hard and wondering if Eddie likes seeing him like this, because he almost always puts him in this position. About to cum with no hope of stopping himself.

"Go ahead," Eddie says quietly. "It doesn't have to mean this is over."

"Eddie..."

"Was that vulgar? I'm sorry, darling."

"No. It's just..." he squirms against Eddie's hand. "You always do this."

"You look beautiful like this. Of course I do it often."

Beautiful. Not sexy or hot. _ Beautiful. _

"It's not about tormenting me?" Waylon jokes. "Just my beauty?"

"Yes."

He sounds so sincere, it's hard to believe otherwise. And maybe that’s another little piece of strange honesty from Eddie. That he finds Waylon on the verge of orgasming truly beautiful. He wants to laugh. He wants to cum just to please him. But he wants more, and he wants to last a little longer, regardless of how quickly Eddie can get him to this point again.

"I don't want to," Waylon replies. "Not yet."

"Okay."

"I need you to kiss me for a little bit," Waylon says quietly. "To help me."

"My pleasure."

He bends back down again, kissing Waylon gently before Waylon steals a little more and a little more. He doesn't stop until he feels the need to start to go away, but his hips still move upward, he still lets out noises every time he rubs against Eddie. But when he does finally press his hands against Eddie's shoulder and nod a small approval to continue, Eddie leaves to grab the bottle of lube and comes back, settling in behind him, one hand on his dick and the other spreading Waylon open.

"Tell me if it hurts, okay? And I'll stop."

Waylon nods, trying to relax. The press of Eddie's cock against his hole feels like a promise of too much, but Waylon has been trying this past month. He ordered a couple of toys to please him a little bit better than his fingers can, trying to work his way up to being stretched open properly. But it’s never the same. None of them have the same slight curve that Eddie’s dick does, and none of it feels as good as it does when he knows it’s Eddie behind it.

"Keep going," he says quietly.

"This doesn't hurt?"

Waylon shakes his head. Eddie obeys, pushing further. He’s lubed Waylon up so much he can feel how wet he is down there, and when Eddie presses further, he bites his lip to cut off an over-eager noise. He feels so full. He thinks if Eddie just stayed like this for awhile Waylon would cum without moving.

"Are you sure?"

Waylon nods, feels Eddie lean forward against him, his leg hiked up against Eddie's side. He pauses, his head pressed against Waylon's shoulder. He knows Eddie is inside of him all of the way. He recognizes the feeling of it, but it’s a surreal type of pleasure.

"Do I get an award?" Waylon breathes out. "For taking it all?"

"Vulgar," Eddie whispers with a laugh.

"Sorry," Waylon says. "I'm taking it back."

Eddie sits up, presses a soft kiss to Waylon's mouth, "Is it okay if I move, darling?"

"Yes."

Eddie's thrusts are slow and methodical. He doesn't move very far out, just rocking forward, deep inside of Waylon. He can feel it. Each tiny movement sending a wave of pleasure through him. He wants to tell Eddie to slow down but he thinks that would only make it worse. He wants to tell him to speed up but he thinks even the thought would be too much for him. And Waylon has thought about this for so long, mostly fantasizing about the ruthless fucking that they usually have. Of Eddie behind him pounding against him so hard that he can't stop cumming. He never thought something slow like this would be making him whisper Eddie's name so much.

Eddie makes a small moan that Waylon recognizes instantly. The tiny  _ hmm  _ that means he's close. Waylon angles his hips up, arching his back to meet Eddie's more urgent thrusts. Eddie cums first, the feeling of his cock twitching and ejaculating inside of Waylon pushes him over the edge, too, and he follows soon after. Eddie moves back to leave him when Waylon's legs tighten around his waist.

"Stay. Just for a second."

So Eddie does. Resting against Waylon's chest, he feels Eddie go soft inside of him. He has an immediate want to go again. He doesn't want to be without Eddie. And not just in the sense of feeling empty without his dick inside of him, but Eddie in general.

"Hey," Waylon says quietly. "I...love you."

"Did you need to take all of me to be able to say it?"

Waylon laughs, reaching back for a pillow to hit him with. It collides against Eddie's shoulder, falling to the ground as Eddie kisses him.

"I hope it's not too vulgar to say that I'd like to try this again, darling," Eddie whispers.

"Not at all."

  
  


— They aren’t perfectly okay. But they have a rhythm. They don’t always share the bed at night, but they always brush their teeth side by side, and they always give each other a kiss goodnight and one of them always pulls the other back for another and another before they finally part their ways. Waylon is smiling more often, and in turn so is Eddie. Things are not perfect. They aren’t completely okay. Eddie has nightmares still. He wakes up sometimes, when he’s sharing the bed with Waylon, to him retreating somewhere to hide. Sometimes Eddie asks if he can go with him, keep him company, but most often Waylon tells him no. But sometimes he lays underneath the bed with him, holding him close, protecting him.

If he could slaughter a hundred people just to keep Waylon from suffering, he would.

But he can’t.

And during the day, Waylon smiles when he cooks breakfast, and he laughs at Eddie’s poorly constructed jokes (most often, though, he laughs when Eddie hasn’t realized he made one at all). They go on morning walks when the sun is rising, holding onto each other’s hands tightly. They try for dates at restaurants and movie theaters. They are careful, though, to avoid the things they know will hurt them. They can’t see horror movies. They can only go into dark places when they know they’ll be safe. They are okay, he thinks. But he still has bad dreams.

  
  


He hears the floorboards creak outside his door, and his eyes snap open, his heart racing.  _ Is it real?  _ Is there really going to be someone there to kill him?

“Waylon?” a whisper presses through the dark.

_ Eddie. _

Of course it’s Eddie.

“Yes?”

“Can I sleep in here?”

He sits up, reaching for his watch, looking at the time on it. Dim green light blinding him with how his eyes had gotten used to the pitch-black. Hours had slipped by in his frozen terror. Hours that he thought he was imagining with how slowly they moved. It’s late. Eddie should’ve been asleep for a while now.

“Yeah.”

The door opens. Waylon makes a space for Eddie on the bed, letting him lay beside him.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Eddie whispers.

“Bad dream?”

“Yeah.”

Waylon waits a beat, scared to ask the question for fear that it’ll start an argument. He doesn’t want Eddie to leave now that he’s here. He feels so much safer now that Eddie’s here. The fear is still there, but it’s not pressing down on his chest, making it hard to breathe.

But he wants to know.

“Can you tell me about it?”

“I don’t want to upset you, darling.”

“Please,” Waylon whispers. “Just talk to me.”

A hand draws through his hair, resting on the small of his back, “Can I tell you about the way it made me feel instead of what it was?”

“Sure.”

Eddie is quiet for a moment, a kiss pressed against Waylon’s forehead.

“When I was a kid I was afraid of almost everything. I couldn’t sleep without a nightlight, I couldn’t look out the window of the second floor bedroom. When it rained, I hid in my closet because I thought the storm would knock down the tree by the house and crush us, and I remember my mom telling me if there was an earthquake or a tornado, that’s where I should hide, if I couldn’t make it to the basement. I was terrified of so many things. And it felt like that. I haven’t felt that scared in a long time, Waylon. I’ve tried my best not to be afraid of other people and things outside of my control. But I kept screaming and nothing would come out. And I kept trying to run but it was like I couldn’t get away, no matter how far I got.”

“Run from what?”

“Oh, everything.”

“Are you still scared?” Waylon asks quietly, but he’s leaning against Eddie’s chest, and he can hear Eddie’s heart, beating like he’s run a marathon. He can feel the slight tremble of his hands where they try to hold onto him.

He isn’t asking Eddie because he doesn’t know the answer. He’s asking him because he wants to be told the truth.

“Yes.”

“I’ll keep you safe,” Waylon says quietly, pressing a kiss against the line of Eddie’s jaw. “Nothing will get you if I’m here.”

“I’m the one that’s supposed to protect you.”

“We can protect each other, can’t we?”

“You want me to protect you?” Eddie asks.

“No,” he says, sarcastically. “Throw me to the wolves, Eddie. Call me darling while they feast upon my bones.”

“Don’t tease me.”

“I’m sorry,” Waylon says, a small smile appearing on his face, hidden in the dark. “Why would you think I wouldn’t want you to protect me?”

“I didn’t know if you… if it made you feel weak.”

“It doesn’t. It makes me feel safe. Besides,” he sighs. “Even if I told you not to, I doubt you would listen.”

“No. I’d let the wolves eat me alive before they ever even looked at you.”

Of course he would.

“Hey,” Waylon says, propping himself up, a hand trailing along the side of Eddie’s face. Every time he touches him, his fingers are touching old scars. Faded like they’re much older than they are. The Engine’s effects regressing but never disappearing. “Can I ask you something?”

“I suppose.”

“How did you end up at Mount Massive?”

“Hm?” Eddie sighs. “Oh. Do we need to talk about that now?”

“Tired?”

“Yes. Very.”

“Can we talk tomorrow?”

He can’t see Eddie’s face very well in the dark, but he knows what expression Eddie must be giving him right now. The same expression when Waylon asks him to take out the trash or help clean the apartment. Eddie likes the place tidy, and he likes it especially when it’s spotless, but he doesn’t like cleaning. He always looks at him with this  _ if I must, then I shall  _ expression, the words said softly, more to himself than to Waylon.

“Okay.”

Reluctant, quiet, but still an answer.

“I love you,” Waylon says quietly, pressing a kiss against his cheek. He moves closer, laying against his chest, hiding his face against his neck. Taking up as much of Eddie as he can. And in return, Eddie’s arms wrap around his waist, covering so much of him with such little effort. Waylon both loves and hates the way it makes him feel. Safe and small and protected versus child-like.

He isn’t a small person by any means—maybe shorter than average, but he isn’t tiny. Eddie is just huge. Tall and broad and muscular, like he’s built ready to tear something apart.

It’s strange to see him so scared, knowing how easy it would be for him to crush Waylon right now.

“Waylon?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you, too,” he whispers. “And please get some rest, darling.”

  
  


_ — Please , _

_ Stop — _

  
  


“Wake up,” he whispers. “Please wake up.”

“W-Waylon?”

He’s leaned over him, a hand on his cheeks, worry across his features, “You were having a nightmare.”

Eddie was hurting him. A hand on his arm, fingers digging in so tight Waylon is sure a bruise will form later. Tears streaking down his face despite his shut eyes, his mouth mumbling, like it’s trying its hardest to force out a scream. When Waylon moved to wake him, he pulled away so violently that for a moment, Waylon thought the scars on his face were the deep dark red they once were.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?” Waylon asks quietly. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Eddie—”

“You don’t tell me about your nightmares, darling,” Eddie says, pushing him away. “Why should I tell you about mine?”

He’s right.

Eddie is right.

  
  


_ — Eddie thinks about starving himself. Refusing to eat until there is nothing left of him. Waylon likes his body, though. He likes Eddie being big and strong and so much larger than him. What would he think, if he knew that it didn’t matter? It has never mattered? That the reason he is like this is because he thought somehow that having muscles would grant him the ability to stop being so fucking weak and useless? _

_ He thinks about starving himself until there is nothing left of him but bones. _

_ But that’s really all there is anyway. _

  
  


“You kill me,” Waylon says quietly, sitting down opposite from him at the table. “In my dreams. You kill me.”

“What?”

“I’m running from someone at Mount Massive. I see you. I get so excited and happy that you’re going to save me. I run to you. And you kill me.”

“Waylon…”

He draws his leg up onto the chair, wrapping his arms around it, “You rape me first though. Or during. You stab me and then rape me while I’m bleeding out. And I know it’s not you, Eddie, but that’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want you to feel guilty for something you didn’t even do.”

But Eddie had thought about it. The other him had almost done it. The image had pushed at his thoughts so many times. So many nights he had stayed away from Waylon, curled up in his space, biting at his skin, trying to tear himself apart because the thoughts were too painful but he couldn’t make them go away.

He should feel guilty. He should feel guilty about everything.

“I don’t expect you to tell me what you had a nightmare about,” Waylon says quietly. “But now you know mine.”

And he wishes he didn’t. Almost as much as he wishes Waylon had never been tormented by the dream in the first place.

  
  


—  _ How easy it would be to destroy everything. End the suffering he endures. Fix himself with one final cut across his throat. How nice it would be to turn the blade around and press it into his abdomen, to take a step off the rooftop, to walk into traffic. How easy it would be to buy up a couple packages of pills and swallow them one by one like candy. _

_ How  _ **_easy._ **

_ He remembers once hearing that when people commit suicide, they change their minds at the last second. When they're falling or when they’re slipping away. That they have the capacity to change their life. That it’s the circumstances they hate, and not themselves. Everything that felt so large feels so fixable. _

_ But he doesn’t feel fixable. He feels broken in a way that can’t be repaired. _

_ So when Eddie steps out of the hotel late at night, watching Waylon walk a few yards ahead of him, he thinks— _

_ How easy it would be to just turn towards the street with its racing cars, speeding along to bars and clubs and dates awaiting them. How easy to die in the streets like he deserves. _

_ He just wants to keep Waylon safe. Maybe this is his answer on how. _

"Waylon," he says quietly, like a prayer. It's been a few days of awkward silence since they last talked. Eddie doesn't know how to. Waylon told him the person he was in his dreams killed him, raped him, hurt him. 

Not dreams.

_ Nightmares _ . 

Waylon got no pleasure from it. The thing he suffered from never deserved to be a dream. As the thing that hurts Eddie the most is that the person he was before, when he was split so clearly in two, that one part was horrified that the other would do such a thing. The Groom got off on turning his intrusive thoughts into reality. Not just a torment on his victims but on himself, too. This Eddie wouldn't do that. This Eddie is the Groom's worst nightmare.

"Are you alright?"

"No," he whispers. "I need to tell you something."

"Okay," Waylon makes room for him on the couch. "Come here."

"I think it's best if I don't, darling."

Waylon's face falls. Beautiful soft features confused and frightened and sad. Everything so mixed into one. Everything that Eddie created him to be by locking him up in a room and hurting him.

Waylon has reassured him that the sex was consensual, but Eddie has to wonder. If he was just trying to appease Eddie, did he really want it? And does he want any of this? And why does Eddie assault him in the dreams if it was? Waylon is terrified of him. He must be.

"I..."

"Eddie?"

"I'm scared," he whispers.

"Of what?" Waylon asks, standing slowly.

"Hurting you. I keep hurting you."

"How--?"

In reality, when he pulls away from Waylon and doesn't let him in. Before, when he locked Waylon up. In Waylon's dreams. Even when they had sex before, he was hurting him. His grip is too tight or his nails claw too harshly. He's left bruises on his neck from kisses and bites. And regardless of how careful he tries to be, he knows when he's inside of Waylon that there is too much of him. He is constantly hurting him, overwhelming him, suffocating him.

"You aren't hurting me, Eddie," he says quietly. "You don't hurt me. You never hurt me. The one at the asylum--"

"I killed four people, Waylon. Not him. Me. Before I was there."

"What do you mean?"

"I was admitted to Mount Massive after my trial. I didn't want to tell you, but... but you need to know. I'm not sure that this--"

"Why did you kill them?" Waylon asks. "Who were they?"

"Family," he says quietly. "Mine."

"Your aunt and uncle?"

"Yes. And my mom."

"Who else, Eddie? Who was number four?"

"My father," he whispers.

And Eddie can remember—

He hates it. He hates how clear the voice is. Telling him to be quiet. Telling him to be a good boy. He remembers counting glow in the dark stars on his ceiling willing it to be over. He remembers the looks his mother gave him like he asked for this or wanted it. He remembers her trying to keep him young. She would shave his legs and buy him clothes with Blue's Clues on them. He remembers brightly colored toys and juice boxes. He remembers being sat down in front of the television when he was thirteen pretending to watch SpongeBob when his dad came home and he remembers being pulled away to the bedroom because he wanted dessert before dinner. He remembers his mother telling him if he had to cry to try and make up an excuse for it that would please his father rather than annoy him.

And he remembers turning fourteen and his dad leaving because he was too old and his mother couldn't have another child. He remembers being slapped hard like it was his choice to grow up and scare off the only person that was providing for the family. And then he remembers his uncle, with a hand on his mouth telling him that his father was telling the truth when he said how good Eddie felt.

And he remembers wanting to drown himself in bleach and torch himself and he tried so hard to scrub his body clean but their touches always lingered.

"Eddie?"

He didn't realize he was saying all this out loud. He doesn't recall sitting on the floor, but Waylon is in front of him, touching his face and trying to get closer to him, but Eddie won't let him. 

"I killed them," he repeats. "You saw what I did to the people at Mount Massive and it doesn't compare to what I did to them."

"You feel guilty about it?" Waylon asks.

"Of course," he whispers. "I know what I'm capable of, darling. I don't want to do it to you."

"But they deserved it."

Eddie blinks a few tears from his eyes, and Waylon snaps into focus before him. The anger written on his face.

"If you hadn't killed them, I would've."

And somehow—

Eddie believes it.

  
  


Three weeks pass. Slow and unsure. Waylon never turns Eddie away when he comes to his room to sleep, but sometimes when Eddie doesn’t come, Waylon will crawl into the bed beside him and hold onto him tight. Some nights, when Eddie can’t sleep, Waylon will be there, drawing shapes on his back or his shoulder or his abdomen. Little circles, hearts, stars. Over and over again, gently tracing the things like he needs an excuse to touch Eddie.

“Do you not want to be alone anymore?” Eddie asks.

“What?”

“You keep coming to my room.”

“Oh,” Waylon says quietly. “I just… want to be near you.”

“Because I told you about my father?”

Waylon looks up to him, his eyes full of pity.

Not pity.

_ Concern. _

“It wasn’t your fault they hurt you,” Waylon whispers.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Eddie feels that pull of tears at his eyes again. The need to cry creeping up on him fast and angry.  _ No.  _ He doesn’t. It’s his fault. It’s always his fault. His father told him that. That he was a tease. That he was asking for it. That he wouldn’t look like that or act like that if he didn’t want it. His mother said the same thing. The person that called him a whore the most was her, and it wasn’t always with her words, but her gazes. That’s why she sold him. That’s why the last thing she said as she counted the money her brother-in-law gave her was,  _ go get paid for what you do best. _

He scared away his dad. And that’s why his uncle and his aunt were allowed to touch him.

“Eddie?”

“They’re dead. Am I allowed to be upset anymore?”

“Of course you are.”

“It doesn’t seem fair. If I killed them, it should… cancel it out.”

“It doesn’t work like that, Eddie. You don’t have to forgive them. You don’t have to feel guilty. Just let me help you.”

“I don’t know how.”

Waylon brings up a hand, resting it on his chest, feeling the heart beat beneath it. Soft and steady, “We’ll figure it out.”

“Together?”

He nods, “Together.”

  
  


—  _ It’s not easy.  _ No. It’s never easy.

But he tries. And trying is all that matters, or so Waylon tells him.

They can’t get a good therapist in the city without providing ID and insurance, but they look up different things online to attempt to help them. Eddie keeps a diary, Waylon cooks and cleans constantly. And they talk. They don’t officially share a bed again, but they sleep beside each other more often than not now. Sometimes Waylon falls asleep in his lap while they’re watching television, and sometimes Eddie falls asleep curled up against Waylon when he’s reading a book he’s bought at the second-hand shop down the street.

Eddie still has the dreams, the bad ones.

But he has the good ones more frequently, too. Where him and Waylon leave, happy and content, able to have their lives. He has so many dreams that they’re married or engaged, sometimes it’s hard when he wakes up not to see Waylon and think of him as his fiance or his husband. Sometimes his intrusive thoughts tell him to steal a baby when he’s at the store, and the two of them could run off to the woods together to raise it. Sometimes, when he’s laying beside Waylon, his hand will rest against his stomach and wish for half a second that Waylon could carry his child so they wouldn’t have to steal one at all.

But he is happy with Waylon, and Waylon is more than enough to make him happy for the rest of his life, because every day that Waylon tells Eddie he loves him, he feels a little closer to believing it, and a little closer to deserving it.


End file.
